Homesick for Mexico

I thought that once our stuff finally arrived here in South Africa, I would start feeling properly at home here, I really did. That's how I remember it working when we moved from Denmark to Mexico. For expats, having your stuff often equals having your home with you. The place you put your stuff is just a canvas to paint your desired environment on, in our case a mishmash of streamlined Scandinavian design, quirky Mexican artifacts, odd pieces designed by yours truly, and Ikea. The house on the inside now looks like me. Still...  

I find myself feeling homesick for Mexico. And yes, by homesick I mean feeling like that is where my home is, where my real life is, and where I would like to return to. I don't just miss my friends, or Mexican food, or speaking Spanish, or being able to walk everywhere, or our apartment, or our flower guy, or the oh so juicy arrachera cuts of meat, or my local Starbucks (even though I do desperately miss all of these, especially Starbucks). I really feel homesick for Mexico.

Now WTF?!?! Why can't I feel at home in this awesome country?

Well, if I really take a proper look at my life I might just understand. Even looking back at my postings on this blog I can see that there are far too many complaints concerning boredom, not having deadlines, or not having stuff to do. The unfortunate truth is that no matter how hard I have tried to start up stuff - volunteering, a book club, sports, traveling, etc - things just don't seem to pan out for me. And to top it all, it seems that the hubby is going to be away pretty much every week at least for the next three months. 

Don't get me wrong, we have had  a bunch of good experiences, braais up the wazoo, different activities, and such things that are part of getting to know a new country. However, that does not a life make, and I guess that's what I'm missing. A life outside of this estate that is beginning to feel like a prison more and more every day. A life that I have chosen, filled with activities that are right for me, and with like-minded people.

Thankfully in my darkest hour I found this. Perhaps there is light (and life) at the end of the tunnel. I can't wait.

The 'beauty' of uneventfulness

There is absolutely nothing going on. 

For a person who thrives on a certain amount of drama that is a really bad thing. The highlight of today has been finding maggots in the bottom of the trash can and the subsequent 'Dooming' of them. 

I need a deadline. I function well on deadlines. I kind of have a deadline for unpacking, since we are getting visitors for dinner on Friday, but I find it very hard to experience house work as something so important that it deserves a deadline. My apologies to all of you housewives who feel differently, but I just don't have that kind of domesticity in me. 

Someone give me an interesting task and a deadline. Please (and dear hubby, no, finding out what to eat for the next two weeks and shopping for it is not an interesting task, and neither is filling out the insurance claim).  

Complete and utter rut

For the past four months that we have been in South Africa I have literally done nothing worth noting with my life. I read, surf the net and occasionally drink too much wine, or coffee, or both. While we were waiting for my husband's work permit to come through (first E & Y, the good for nothing company, took over two months to translate 3 measly one-page documents into English - two from Spanish and one from Danish, followed by a prolonged Home Affairs deliberation time of 40 working days. Yes 8 weeks) I was comfortably in limbo. We couldn't buy a car, I wasn't allowed to drive the company car my husband had been allocated, so I really could get no regular activities going, let alone something I would be doing every single day, such as volunteering. I had a valid reason to curl up on the couch with my cup of coffee and go through a book a day.

Now, some days after getting the car, I still seem to be stuck in that rut. I still get up in the morning only to hang out all day long. I have started going to the gym on the estate, but that is not saying much. Again, I'm faced with the question 'what will I ever do with my life'. I'm plagued by nightmares of returning to Europe some time in the distant future and having to work in McDonalds, because no one else will hire a person, who has pretty much never worked a day in her life, not really that is. Not that there is anything wrong with working in Mickey Dee's, but I have actually, eons ago, tried it out for a while and would hate to have to repeat the experience. Burgers and me don't mix, unless the burger is going down my throat.

In Denmark I was studying and finally ended up with a Masters in a very non-practical field. In Mexico I was volunteering, and eventually got far too involved for my own good. But what to do in South Africa? Every time we move I decide this will be the time I'll finish my bestseller that will also garner critical acclaim, i.e. I'll become the next Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, or Philip Roth. At this point I'll also settle for becoming the next Stepehenie Meyer or Marian Keyes and just go for the bestseller. I'm easy to please.

The only slight glitches in my brilliant plan of becoming a world renowned author, are that I never seem to feel inspired enough to actually sit down and write, not to mention the fact that when it really comes to it, I'm just not that great a writer. This was a very harsh realization I recently came to as I hit a major milestone in my life. I can still feel the ripples of my existential crisis, even if the only tangible remnant of it is the question. 

I think I'm going to try my hand at poetry now. Feel my desperation.